Consensus Decision Making is what bitcoin needed

[johnyj]

Just had some good reading at

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

"Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.

This ensures that all opinions, ideas and concerns are taken into account. Through listening closely to each other, the group aims to come up with proposals that work for everyone. Consensus is neither compromise nor unanimity - it aims to go further by weaving together everyone's best ideas and key concerns - a process that often results in surprising and creative solutions, inspiring both the individual and the group as whole.

Consensus can work in all types of settings - small groups, local communities, businesses, even whole nations and territories. The exact process may differ depending on the size of the group and other factors, but the basic principles are the same. "

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[johnyj]

Also from wiki

As a decision-making process, consensus decision-making aims to be:

Agreement Seeking: A consensus decision making process attempts to generate as much agreement as possible

Collaborative: Participants contribute to a shared proposal and shape it into a decision that meets the concerns of all group members as much as possible

Cooperative: Participants in an effective consensus process should strive to reach the best possible decision for the group and all of its members, rather than competing for personal preferences

Egalitarian: All members of a consensus decision-making body should be afforded, as much as possible, equal input into the process. All members have the opportunity to present, and amend proposals

Inclusive: As many stakeholders as possible should be involved in the consensus decision-making process

Participatory: The consensus process should actively solicit the input and participation of all decision-makers

-------------------

You can clearly see that XT move violated some of the rules in this practice, thus leading to competitive, rather than cooperative atmosphere

[knight22]

Also from wiki

As a decision-making process, consensus decision-making aims to be:

Agreement Seeking: A consensus decision making process attempts to generate as much agreement as possible

Collaborative: Participants contribute to a shared proposal and shape it into a decision that meets the concerns of all group members as much as possible

Cooperative: Participants in an effective consensus process should strive to reach the best possible decision for the group and all of its members, rather than competing for personal preferences

Egalitarian: All members of a consensus decision-making body should be afforded, as much as possible, equal input into the process. All members have the opportunity to present, and amend proposals

Inclusive: As many stakeholders as possible should be involved in the consensus decision-making process

Participatory: The consensus process should actively solicit the input and participation of all decision-makers

-------------------

You can clearly see that XT move violated some of the rules in this practice, thus leading to competitive, rather than cooperative atmosphere

The thing is, bitcoin definitely something different with all of what we have seen in the past. A consensus with a small group of people can indeed work fairly well with all the points you mentioned above but how to reach a consensus with a very very large group of people with diametrical point of views? The answer is, it is most likely impossible. This leads us to an impasse where no decisions can be made while the market and all the businesses can't afford to wait forever. I think that XT if forcing that consensus to actually be made at some point.

[BitProdigy]

I wonder if there is a way to use block chain technology to arrive at consensus for questions such as, "what is the best solution to the block size issue?" and implement that best solution? Surely there must be a way to utilize this shiny new technology which is essentially just a decentralized way to arrive at consensus, to arrive at consensus on something as important as this block size issue is….

[johnyj]

The thing is, bitcoin definitely something different with all of what we have seen in the past. A consensus with a small group of people can indeed work fairly well with all the points you mentioned above but how to reach a consensus with a very very large group of people with diametrical point of views? The answer is, it is most likely impossible. This leads us to an impasse where no decisions can be made while the market and all the businesses can't afford to wait forever. I think that XT if forcing that consensus to actually be made at some point.

Because bitcoin is something totally new, so we could not use any traditional method like war and vote to resolve the conflict of interest, it just does not suit, a fork will just cause mutually assured destruction, and most importantly it broke the promise of limited supply of bitcoin. For money, when trust is gone, the value is gone

In fact, if you look at those people that uses consensus decision-making model, they are very close to the group of people that bitcoin users are: anarchists, independent, vountarily

From the main article:
-------------------------------
Who uses consensus?

Consensus is not a new idea. Variations of consensus have been tested and proven around the world and through time.

On the American continent non-hierarchical societies have existed for hundreds of years. Before 1600, five nations - the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca - formed the Haudenosaunee Confederation, which works on a consensual basis and is still in existence today.

There are also many examples of successful and stable utopian communes using consensus decision making such as the Christian Herrnhuter settlement 1741-1760 and the production commune Boimondeau in France 1941-1972.

Christiania, an autonomous district in the city of Copenhagen has been self-governed by its inhabitants since 1971.

Within the co-operative movement many housing co-ops and social enterprises use consensus successfully: prominent examples include Green City, a wholefood wholesaler based in Scotland; and Radical Routes, a network of housing co-ops and workers’ co-ops in the UK.

The business meetings of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) use consensus to integrate the insights of each individual, arriving at the best possible approximation of the Truth.

Political and social activists such as many anarchists and others working for peace, the environment and social justice commonly regard consensus to be essential to their work. They believe that the methods for achieving change need to match their goals and visions of a free, nonviolent, egalitarian society. In protests around the world many mass actions and protest camps involving several thousand people have been organised and carried out using consensus, including the 1999 ‘Battle of Seattle’ World Trade Organisation protest, the 2005 G8 summit protests in Scotland and the Camps for Climate Action in the UK, Germany, Australia, Netherlands and other countries.

[knight22]

a fork will just cause mutually assured destruction, and most importantly it broke the promise of limited supply of bitcoin. For money, when trust is gone, the value is gone

No it won't. You seem to forget that there is a built in economic incentive to prevent that.

[johnyj]

I wonder if there is a way to use block chain technology to arrive at consensus for questions such as, "what is the best solution to the block size issue?" and implement that best solution? Surely there must be a way to utilize this shiny new technology which is essentially just a decentralized way to arrive at consensus, to arrive at consensus on something as important as this block size issue is….

Blockchain can help us to get some technical facility but ultimately it is the human that is making decision. You can prohibit any change in protocol, but then you lose the ability to adopt to any unknown future change

I have pointed out this 2 years ago that there is no clear decision making mechanism in the bitcoin community, especially the core devs. But unfortunately at that time I did not noticed and researched consensus decision making model, now it is time to pay more attention to this decision-making model


An example for the importance of consensus building:

The 2013 fork is reversed by an urgent decision among core devs, but obviously it does not satisfy everyone, especially Gavin. Since that decision was not well reached through a consensus model, Gavin felt that he is left over and dis-empowered by the other core devs. This in turn leads to his radical action of joining XT branch and cause turbulence in the whole community 2 years later

[johnyj]

a fork will just cause mutually assured destruction, and most importantly it broke the promise of limited supply of bitcoin. For money, when trust is gone, the value is gone

No it won't. You seem to forget that there is a built in economic incentive to prevent that.

What incentive? When your coins suddenly doubled overnight, won't you sell half of them on the chain that you don't like?

It is highly likely that those who commanding 25% of the hashing power on core chain owns 75% of existing coins (Majority of new ASIC hash power are speculative late adopters and have mined only a little coins so far) Besides, what if satoshi decided to use his 1 million coins to wipe out the XT chain's value?

Fork is suicide

[johnyj]

A following thought: If people could not reach enough consensus after all efforts, what should they do?

I think the answer is: "Do nothing until they are facing real measurable problems"

Historically, full consensus is usually reached when parties with conflicting interest are all facing the same crisis thus must act towards the same goal

So, if 1MB block is really full and many transactions are experiencing significant delay, it will raise the level of consensus of majority of members to go over to larger blocks

Currently, it is just a threat out of imagination. The stress test several weeks ago has proved that even every block is more than full, the network can still process the transaction normally, and nodes only need to add one line of configuration to discard those very-low-fee transactions to prevent them from entering the mempool

Imagine that one day, even a legitimate 0.01 BTC fee transaction can not be processed (Which makes bitcoin more expensive than bank), then it is very easy to reach consensus to raise the block size

Side chain supporters will try to persuade people to use their solution, but similarly, people must reach enough consensus on that matter. Just read a research paper from bank of england, it said, you don't always need trustless model everywhere. To use offchain financial service, some large wallet service provider is enough, because the transactions are small, the risk for each individual is also small

Based on statistics, majority of bitcoin transactions on blockchain are larger than 0.05 BTC, e.g. $10. So a fee higher than 0.005 btc will start to affect small transactions significantly, but we are far from reaching that status yet

[SimpleIn]

Very interesting topic. Developers note.

[BitProdigy]

A following thought: If people could not reach enough consensus after all efforts, what should they do?

I think the answer is: "Do nothing until they are facing real measurable problems"

Historically, full consensus is usually reached when parties with conflicting interest are all facing the same crisis thus must act towards the same goal

Looks like Bitcoin XT is that crisis.  I like this method for forcing a decision to be made. Instead of waiting for the crisis we wish to avoid, introducing Bitcoin XT forces the issue before we get there.

Bitcoin XT then becomes the default if no consensus can otherwise be reached. If no other consensus is reached, then consensus for XT as the default will eventually be reached instead.

This common threat serves as a catalyst for come to "REAL CONSENSUS", which I believe in our case is a block size increase on Core.

Imagine that one day, even a legitimate 0.01 BTC fee transaction can not be processed (Which makes bitcoin more expensive than bank), then it is very easy to reach consensus to raise the block size

I think if we wait until that point then XT 75% will be reached in panic.

Side chain supporters will try to persuade people to use their solution, but similarly, people must reach enough consensus on that matter. Just read a research paper from bank of england, it said, you don't always need trustless model everywhere. To use offchain financial service, some large wallet service provider is enough, because the transactions are small, the risk for each individual is also small

Based on statistics, majority of bitcoin transactions on blockchain are larger than 0.05 BTC, e.g. $10. So a fee higher than 0.005 btc will start to affect small transactions significantly, but we are far from reaching that status yet

I think this Bitcoin XT model, of introducing a single general solution to the all of the problems with a 75% consensus threat into the mix, all in order to force the community to buckle down and arrive at a "TRUE CONSENSUS" on the best solution, or do nothing and agree that the introduced general solution 75% consensus threat is the best solution.

[Hopalong]

Just had some good reading at

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

"Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.

This ensures that all opinions, ideas and concerns are taken into account. Through listening closely to each other, the group aims to come up with proposals that work for everyone. Consensus is neither compromise nor unanimity - it aims to go further by weaving together everyone's best ideas and key concerns - a process that often results in surprising and creative solutions, inspiring both the individual and the group as whole.

Consensus can work in all types of settings - small groups, local communities, businesses, even whole nations and territories. The exact process may differ depending on the size of the group and other factors, but the basic principles are the same. "

You want a centralized decision making?

Bitcoin is anarchistic in nature and the more people is involed the more conflict you get.

[Delek]

99.9999% is majority. Whats that of 75%? WTF

[balu2]

Just had some good reading at

http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

"Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.

This ensures that all opinions, ideas and concerns are taken into account. Through listening closely to each other, the group aims to come up with proposals that work for everyone. Consensus is neither compromise nor unanimity - it aims to go further by weaving together everyone's best ideas and key concerns - a process that often results in surprising and creative solutions, inspiring both the individual and the group as whole.

Consensus can work in all types of settings - small groups, local communities, businesses, even whole nations and territories. The exact process may differ depending on the size of the group and other factors, but the basic principles are the same. "

great post. But consensus only works in groups that have consensus to consensus. If you have rogue players like Gavin who try to undermine the consensus you have some problems. People would need to exclude anyone from the group first who does not respect the consensus principle. So, yes, it can work quite good and produce really good decisions but not as long as Gavinhearn still getting attention.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

I agree with consensus being what we need, but 75% is not enough for a hard fork, we would need more, also, they don't tell all the shitty stuff XT does, they only talk about the 8MB blocksize increase (which we don't need that much now, BTC is still a niche used software).

[Delek]

I agree with consensus being what we need, but 75% is not enough for a hard fork, we would need more, also, they don't tell all the shitty stuff XT does, they only talk about the 8MB blocksize increase (which we don't need that much now, BTC is still a niche used software).

Exactly. Agree 100%.

[SimpleIn]

Good topic. I like

[johnyj]

A following thought: If people could not reach enough consensus after all efforts, what should they do?

I think the answer is: "Do nothing until they are facing real measurable problems"

Historically, full consensus is usually reached when parties with conflicting interest are all facing the same crisis thus must act towards the same goal

Looks like Bitcoin XT is that crisis.  I like this method for forcing a decision to be made. Instead of waiting for the crisis we wish to avoid, introducing Bitcoin XT forces the issue before we get there.

Bitcoin XT then becomes the default if no consensus can otherwise be reached. If no other consensus is reached, then consensus for XT as the default will eventually be reached instead.

This common threat serves as a catalyst for come to "REAL CONSENSUS", which I believe in our case is a block size increase on Core.

Imagine that one day, even a legitimate 0.01 BTC fee transaction can not be processed (Which makes bitcoin more expensive than bank), then it is very easy to reach consensus to raise the block size

I think if we wait until that point then XT 75% will be reached in panic.

Side chain supporters will try to persuade people to use their solution, but similarly, people must reach enough consensus on that matter. Just read a research paper from bank of england, it said, you don't always need trustless model everywhere. To use offchain financial service, some large wallet service provider is enough, because the transactions are small, the risk for each individual is also small

Based on statistics, majority of bitcoin transactions on blockchain are larger than 0.05 BTC, e.g. $10. So a fee higher than 0.005 btc will start to affect small transactions significantly, but we are far from reaching that status yet

I think this Bitcoin XT model, of introducing a single general solution to the all of the problems with a 75% consensus threat into the mix, all in order to force the community to buckle down and arrive at a "TRUE CONSENSUS" on the best solution, or do nothing and agree that the introduced general solution 75% consensus threat is the best solution.

Or just ignore it as noise What's wrong with bitcoin? It works well today tomorrow next week, next month...

To be precisely, fork is that crisis. Because a fork without super majority consensus will essentially kill bitcoin, it is an extinction level events that every bitcoin supporter should try their best to avoid. Since XT brought us with this potential risk, it will get strong resistance from everywhere

Core can also raise the block size, but never in a dramatic way that XT promotes

[johnyj]

You want a centralized decision making?

Bitcoin is anarchistic in nature and the more people is involed the more conflict you get.

That's the reason those anarchists select this consensus based model to make decisions, it suits bitcoin community very well

[johnyj]

great post. But consensus only works in groups that have consensus to consensus. If you have rogue players like Gavin who try to undermine the consensus you have some problems. People would need to exclude anyone from the group first who does not respect the consensus principle. So, yes, it can work quite good and produce really good decisions but not as long as Gavinhearn still getting attention.

In a consensus decision making model, EVERYONE's opinion is important, Gavin and Mike are no exception. They might absolutely against the idea of keeping the blocksize forever at 1MB, thus a consensus of never-changing-block size will never be reached. But that is the result of this decision making model, everyone will at least get a solution that they can live with

Someone pointed out that the priorities of bitcoin should be in following order: Consensus, decentralization, store of value, and payment system. I have not give it a thorough analysis, but I strongly agree that the consensus is the highest priority, no change should be allowed without reaching full consensus (the current status is always 100% consensus)

And the way to reach a consensus should not be based on any political means like lobbying and bribery, but through seminar and exchange of ideas